A Child Lost Read online

  “You’re welcome,” Henrietta said. “It’s the least I could do.” She stood up now. “I should be going. I’d like to talk to Clive about all of this and get started, and it’s a long drive back.”

  Gunther hurriedly stood up as well. “How can I thank you, Mrs. Howard? Henrietta,” he corrected himself. “I am in your debt.”

  Henrietta smiled and again held out her hand to him, which he again took and kissed.

  “There’s no need to thank me, Gunther. I’d like to help. Can I drive you back?” she asked them both, withdrawing her hand.

  Gunther looked to Elsie.

  “No,” said Elsie, returning his glance and then looking up at Henrietta. “We . . . we want to take the bus and walk a ways.”

  “Do you really want to take the bus? You sure this doesn’t have something to do with inconveniencing Karl?” Henrietta asked, her eyebrow arched.

  “Well . . . his hip is bothering him . . .”

  “Elsie! Fritz can easily take you.”

  “Well, we wanted to sit a while with Ma, anyway.”

  Henrietta sighed. “Suit yourself,” she said, pulling on her gloves.

  “Maybe we could have another game of rummy,” Ma said eagerly, looking at Elsie and Gunther.

  Henrietta swiftly looked to Elsie, who blushed profusely.

  “It turns out he knows how to play rummy,” she said with an embarrassed shrug. “And another game called euchre that he’s teaching us.”

  “Can I have a word, Elsie?” Henrietta asked. “Perhaps in the foyer?”

  “Yes, of course,” Elsie said weakly.

  “Good-bye, Ma,” Henrietta said. “I’ll see you soon, I’m sure. Mr. Stockel,” she said inclining her head toward him. “Good day. Nice to have met you.”

  “Good day, Mrs. Howard. Thank you,” Gunther said, still standing, and twisting his cap again. “I should go and find driver and tell him to bring the car?”

  “Yes, please. That would be kind,” Henrietta answered him.

  Once in the hall, Henrietta turned toward Elsie, trailing along behind her.

  “What is going on, Elsie?” Henrietta demanded.

  “What do you mean? I . . . I just told you everything,” Elsie stammered, not able to hold eye contact with Henrietta for more than a few seconds.

  “You know what I mean! Do you . . . do you care for Gunther?” Henrietta whispered urgently.

  There was silence for several moments as the two girls stared at each other.

  “You do, don’t you?” Henrietta said, incredulously.

  Elsie bit her lip. “I . . . I think I might, Henrietta. I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t help it.”

  A hundred thoughts went through Henrietta’s mind as she tried to absorb this. This would never do. No one, much less Grandfather, would accept this. But she would have to tread carefully. Hadn’t she resolved to help Elsie more? To listen?

  “Are you sure you can’t help it, dearest?” Henrietta tried to say calmly. “Because not so very long ago you were in love with Stanley and then Harrison—enough to want to throw everything away and elope with him, let’s not forget. Surely you must see how this looks? And fickle is not the only word that comes to mind.”

  Elsie’s face turned crimson, and she sighed. “I know it looks bad, Henrietta, but this is different. Truly, it is. I’ve . . . I’ve never felt this about anyone ever before,” she tried to explain hurriedly. “If you only knew him, as I do, you’d see—”

  “Your current feelings aside, Elsie,” Henrietta interrupted, “do you know how much work I went through to get you into Mundelein?”

  Elsie surprisingly shot her a look of incredulousness. “You?” she retorted hoarsely. “Yes, you stood up to Grandfather, I’ll give you that—but I’m the one who did the work to get in!”

  Stunned by this rare show of defiance, Henrietta had to admit that Elsie had a point. “Fair enough. But so you’re just going to give all that up? Run off and marry Gunther, like Ma did with Pa? And then what? You’ll be cut off, you know! Is that what you want?”

  Henrietta didn’t know why she was so upset, but she felt almost betrayed by Elsie, as if Elsie were her child and she was going astray. She knew she had no right to say such things to Elsie—she was practically a grown woman, and wasn’t she always going on about how Elsie should make her own choices? But yet . . . how could she just stand by and watch her throw her life away?

  “No one said anything about marriage, Henrietta,” Elsie said quietly. “You asked if I cared for him, and I do. Why is that such a crime?”

  “Oh, Elsie,” Henrietta sighed. “It’s not, of course. But usually that leads to other things; of all people, you should know that. I thought you wanted an education, that you wanted a life of teaching children and being independent.”

  “I never said I wanted to be independent. That was you,” Elsie retorted, though her voice was controlled, or perhaps just sad. “You don’t have a monopoly on love, you know. Some of us get to have it, too, sometimes.”

  “Oh, Elsie!” Henrietta exclaimed, again feeling in danger of crying. “I—”

  She was interrupted by Ma shuffling into the foyer. “You still here?” she said to Henrietta, looking out the side window panel. “Car’s out there,” she nodded.

  “Very well,” Henrietta said briskly and looked pointedly at Elsie. “I’ll telephone you.” Karl shuffled in then with her fur coat and hat.

  “Here you are, madame,” he said holding the coat for her while she slipped into it.

  “Good-bye, then,” Henrietta said, hastily wiping a tear from her eye. Why was she so upset?

  Ma stunned her, then, by coming forward and wrapping her arms loosely around her, which was the closest Ma had ever come to a real embrace. “I’m sorry about the baby,” she whispered into Henrietta’s ear. “I know what it feels like to lose a child.” She gave Henrietta a squeeze before she pulled back.

  Fresh tears formed in Henrietta’s eyes, momentarily blurring her vision. So touched was she by her mother’s rare words of sympathy that a whole torrent of tears threatened to burst from her. Fiercely, she kept them at bay, however, though her throat ached from the effort.

  “You’ll be all right,” said Ma in rare, kind voice. “You always are.”

  Henrietta managed a faint smile. “Thanks, Ma,” she said and, not knowing what else to do, hurried out the door.

  Chapter 4

  Rose banged on the door, waiting. She was unfortunately wearing high heels, and the freezing slush she had waded through on her way to Lucy’s and Gwen’s had leaked into every crevice, rubbing her feet raw and numbing them. In fact, she could barely feel them at this point. She chastised herself for not grabbing her boots when she had fled the house, Billy with her, but she hadn’t been thinking clearly.

  “Lucy!” Rose called, as she banged again. She felt she might cry at any minute, but she knew it would set Billy off, so she closed her eyes and tried to remain calm. Her father was at it again. Drinking. There was rarely a night these days that he wasn’t drinking.

  His drunken rages had been bad enough to endure when they only happened a couple of times a week—usually Wednesdays because it was poker night at Lou’s, the bar just down the street, and Fridays because it was the day he got his paycheck. But now it was almost every night. Invariably on those nights, he would stumble home and in a slurred voice, demand his dinner, though Rose and Billy had already meagerly eaten theirs hours earlier. Rose would obey, however, and hurry to set down before him the plate she had kept warm in the oven. But it was always a crap shoot as to how he would respond. Usually he would devour it, some of it inevitably spilling down the front of him. But sometimes he would find some small thing to object to on the plate, such as there being too much gravy, or not enough gravy, or that the beef was too dry, or that he didn’t like peas (even though he did). It could be anything, in fact—any small minutia had the potential to cause him to suddenly pick up the plate and hurl the whole thing at the
wall.

  Rose wanted to cry each time this happened, not because of the shock of it (not anymore, anyway) or the mess she would have to clean up, but because of the awful waste of food. After he eventually passed out, she and Billy would sometimes pick through the broken shards of smashed pottery for any salvageable chunks of food, especially the meat. Rose had become rather adept at brushing off small shards of glass or crockery and had only a couple of times cut the inside of her mouth as a result of their salvaging. Sometimes, though, it was hopeless, and nothing could be saved.

  Rose had learned early on, when she had taken over the role of cooking after her mother died when she was just seven, not to serve him anything besides meat, potato, and a vegetable, if she had enough money to get some. A couple of times, however, when the groceries and the money were running low, she had attempted to serve him eggs or even tuna salad, but the result had been fury and rage, with her father screaming that it wasn’t a fit dinner for a working man.

  These dinner rants were usually followed by an Act Two of sorts, which consisted of a volley of obscenities, aimed sometimes at her but more often than not at Billy, his backward son, whom he especially seemed to despise. Billy did not ever appear affected by his father’s verbal abuse, however, and would dumbly take it, after which he would go upstairs to his room and whittle, emitting a sort of droning, humming noise as he did so and rocking back and forth. It drove Rose crazy, his constant humming, but she never tried to stop him, as she suspected it was his only way of coping.

  When they were little, when their mother was still alive, her father never hit Billy, though he had shoved him up against the wall plenty of times, usually because of some mistake Billy inevitably made, either in what he said or didn’t say, or what he accidentally did, like knock something over, or didn’t do, like forgetting to fill the coal bucket. Recently, however, perhaps due to the increased drinking, something seemed to have worsened in her father’s deranged mind, and he had taken to beating Billy on a regular basis.

  Billy was a large, beefy twenty year old, with thick arms and matching thick lips. And while her father was not a small man by any means, perhaps he had never initially hit Billy out of some unconscious fear, as Billy was easily twice the size of him and had been since he was fourteen. But something lately had made him lash out at Billy for the first time, to actually strike him across his thick cheeks, and Billy had not fought back. He had just stood there like a dumb animal, like a cow, Rose had thought in the moment, taking the abuse without a word, which seemed to have fueled their father’s rage all the more. And now it had become part of the routine. First a torrent of verbal abuse, then the violence, often involving him taking off his belt to whip Billy, not satisfied until some sort of blood was drawn.

  Tonight had been particularly bad. It was the usual scene unfolding, Rose watching from the corner, unable to say anything to stop it. She had tried that before, but it only made it worse for Billy. Tonight, however, after he had hit Billy a number of times about the head, Billy had sunk to his knees and tried for the first time to block the blows with one of his arms, emitting a simple “please,” as if he were still a little boy, his face scrunched up as if he were going to cry. This desperate begging had touched something off in Rose, and she felt her own fury erupt. Without really thinking about it, she had grabbed a frying pan and hit her father on the back of the head with it as hard as she could and watched, with equal parts satisfaction and horror, as he slid to the floor.

  With shaking hands, she stumbled across the room and put the pan back in the oven, hoping that he wouldn’t remember what had hit him when he woke up in the morning. She helped Billy to his feet, then, bundled him in his coat and dragged him out into the freezing late February air, though he protested loudly. She had barely put anything on herself, but she did not feel the cold; she was sweating and panicked. Even Billy’s hand felt hot in hers as she pulled him along Damen Avenue. She didn’t really have a plan—all she knew was that she had to get Billy out of that house. She would not stand for it one more minute.

  Two blocks into the escape, however, it occurred to her that now that her father was knocked out, they could have remained in the house in relative safety for the night. She paused at the corner of Damen and Waveland, wondering if they should go back. After all, how could Lucy and Gwen really help her at this point? But she had imagined an escape so many times, and now that she had dared to begin it, she didn’t want to retreat, though she realized regretfully, their breath crystalizing around them as she hesitated, that she hadn’t really planned it out all that well, after all. Well, it was too late now, she decided, and trudged on, still pulling Billy—who had begun the awful droning—along behind her down the remaining streets until she reached Lucy and Gwen’s apartment building on Evergreen, just off Damen.

  “Gwen!” she tried shouting, and just as she was about to bang again, a bleary-eyed Lucy opened the door, pulling her robe tighter around her upon feeling the blast of cold air.

  “Rose? What are you doing here? What happened?” she asked, her eyes looking over the hulking Billy, his nose and part of his forehead caked with frozen blood. “Get in here; come on,” she said, opening the door.

  The two of them shuffled inside.

  Gwen appeared from down the hallway dressed in men’s pajamas. “What’s going on, Luce? Jesus, Rose, what happened?”

  “Let me guess,” Lucy said bitterly, helping Billy out of his coat. “Here, Bill, sit down on the sofa there,” she said, pointing to it, though he instead hunkered down into the armchair next to it, as if he hadn’t heard her.

  “It’s a shame we don’t have a fireplace, just those stupid things,” Lucy said, nodding at the radiator under the front window.

  “And our ass landlord controls the heat, so that’s why it’s fucking freezing in here,” Gwen added.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rose said morosely. “Do you have a wet towel maybe?”

  “Sure, Rose. Just a minute.”

  Lucy headed off to the kitchen, which lay behind a thick, battered swinging door.

  “He at it again, poor kid?” Gwen asked, pulling Rose over to the couch.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Rose said, her voice unsteady as she collapsed in a heap on the sofa and tried to hold back her tears. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Hey, kid, it’s okay,” Gwen said, rubbing her back. “We don’t mind, do we, Luce?” she said to Lucy, who had just come in with a tray of mismatched mugs.

  “Course we don’t,” Lucy said, setting the tray down in front of them. “I put some coffee on. Here,” she said, handing Rose a wet rag. “For him,” she said, nodding toward Billy. “I’d do it, but I don’t think he’ll let me.”

  “No, he won’t. Thanks, Lucy,” Rose said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and getting to her feet. She stood in front of Billy and tapped her knuckle under his chin so that he tipped his head, the back of which she cradled with one hand while she began to gingerly dab his nose and then the gash above his right eye.

  “No!” he roared, pulling back.

  “Bill!” she said in a firm voice. “Sit still now. This’ll just take a minute. Be a good boy.” Her voice quieted as she dabbed. “Shhh . . . that’s it. Hold still. Good boy. Jesus,” she said, wincing. “Gwen—do you think this needs a stitch?”

  Gwen got up and peered at the wound. “Probably. But he’ll live without it. It’ll be a bad scar, but it don’t matter on a man.”

  Lucy disappeared and reappeared with some cotton and tape. “Sorry we don’t have anything else,” she said, holding it out to Rose.

  “This’ll do fine, Luce, thanks. I should have grabbed something on the way out, but I didn’t think. Here, Billy, you hold this,” she said, handing him the wet rag. “Sit still. Don’t move.” Gingerly, she placed the cotton squares on his wound while Lucy ripped off strips of brown tape and handed them to her. “Billy! Don’t suck it!” Rose said, referring to the wet rag, the corner of which Billy ha
d just put in his mouth. Billy ignored her, however, and went on sucking while Rose applied the tape.

  “Give me that,” Rose said, pulling the rag from his mouth and using it to wipe the dried blood from his nose, though he tried to pull back. “Billy! Sit still. Almost done.” She dabbed quickly. “There now,” she said softly, when she had removed most of it. “Good as new. Just sit there.” She took a step back from him, observing him, as if to detect any other wounds she should bind. She was sure there were plenty of wounds and old scars in his simple mind, but she couldn’t do anything about those. “I said don’t suck it!” she chastised him, but he kept the end of the rag in his mouth anyway, making him resemble a large, overgrown dog.

  “Oh, I don’t care what you do,” she sighed and sank back onto the sofa next to Gwen.

  “I’ll get him a drink,” Lucy said, hurrying off toward the kitchen. “The coffee should be ready by now anyway.”

  Lucy came back in carrying a coffee pot and a glass of water, which she handed to Billy. Eagerly, he drank down the whole thing at once. She poured the coffee into the three waiting mugs on the table and handed one each to Rose and Gwen, and then balanced herself on the arm of the sofa beside Gwen, as there were no other chairs. “Sorry we don’t have any cream. All out until we get paid next.”

  “That’s okay. Black’s fine,” Rose said, staring at hers instead of drinking it. The three of them sat in silence for a few moments until Rose finally spoke. “I didn’t know what else to do,” Rose said, looking at both of them. “He was . . . he was terrible tonight. Like he was possessed or something.”

  “And he’s not usually terrible?” Gwen asked, piqued.

  “Tonight was different,” Rose said, glancing over at Billy.

  “How’d you get away?” Lucy asked, her long blonde hair tied up in a simple ribbon behind her head.

  “I hit him with a frying pan,” Rose said solemnly.

  “Thatta girl!” Gwen said fervently. “You should have killed him and said that it was an accident. That he slipped and fell and hit his head.”